@ MajikMyst: There's no reason to cast Anthony Daniels since all he ever does is the voice for C-3P0, that's his thing and that's why we love him for it... as for the big name live-action actors you mentioned such as Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson... they're not voice actors, they're live-action actors... which means you'd be paying a tonne of money for their names and that's it. They aren't talented with voice acting like Steve Blum and Kari (I love Kari) Wahlgren are.

People do care about voice actors because a lot of people follow cartoons and anime and video games and recognise when their favourite voice actors are in those things. Just because you personally don't doesn't automatically cancel out their worth and talent as voice actors.

If they did get Hollywood actors to do the voices I would have scoffed at this entire project and said it was a waste of money and that they were mismanaging funds. Nope, the voice acting definitely didn't cost that much, but that's the beauty of it, they knew the right people so they could get MAXIMUM talent without busting their budget for it getting waste-of-time names like... Mel Gibson. Just because a voice actor doesn't get paid as much doesn't mean they have no talent. These are extremely talented people doing what they love to do.

As for the making of the game... No, it wouldn't be as easy as just making a few animation cycles, plonking down a few area maps and NPCs to randomly populate them. You'd have to take in a number of factors into account while making it including trying to predict what the player is going to do, if the area you've created is balanced enough, is it too difficult, too easy... does the area make sense, if I put this here, does it actually look like a proper landscape or does it look like I've just piled a bunch of random rocks here?

Sure, big companies have ways of automating the process by creating engines to do most of the work, but with this game, like any game, particularly an RPG, there are a hell of a lot of things to be considered and trying to balance all of those things is pretty difficult.

Of course, if it was as easy as you like to suggest, I'd be making my own indie-RPGs right now instead of typing these posts lol.

Shrek cost $60 million to make.. Even with those big names doing the voices..

So seriously.. I question how much this game costs to make.. I feel I have ample reason to.. If you don't that is fine.. But nit picking to prove your point doesn't prove anything.. Mel Gibson isn't a voice actor.. Seriously?? Come on now..

You also don't have to lecture me on how games are made or how MMO's are made.. As I said, I have been a part of making a lot of them.. If you want to think it is this grand complicated process that costs $100 million dollars.. Then go ahead.. While I am not saying that all of it is simple.. It isn't that hard either.. Most of the textures being used are being reused from Kotor and Kotor2.. Much of the code being used is from those games.. The engine being used is simply an upgrade.. Heck some of the animations being used came from those games.. Even the light side dark side mechanic came from KOTOR and isn't new.. Much of this game was written when they made Kotor.. There is a video of them making Corscant, if you watch it, it is mostly cut and paste or copy and paste.. Seriously watch it..

Sure.. Making the quests work and the stories will take some effort.. As will the scripting and the voice acting to match events.. But not $100+ million worth.. Again not even when they aren't using big name actors for characters.. Look at Shrek, Totally digital and still came in at $60 million to make..

Christ!! I am entitled to my opinions.. You don't have to like them or agree with them..

Quote:

Originally Posted by RogueJedi86

Never heard of Chris Hayden.

My bad.. Hayden Christensen

I always get his name confused.. I was close.. Sorta.. Played Anakin Slywalker in Ep2 and Ep 3..

Natalie Portman would be a big name too.. Her name is correct..

You right about the circles thing.. But to me a big name actor is someone that everyone for the most part has heard of.. Eddie Murphy.. Anyone that is at least in their 20's or 30's has at least heard of him.. The last time I watched anything Anime was Speed Racer in the 70's.. In a time where anime wasn't really all that popular..

You can go through pretty much all of the Disney Pixar movies and see a list of Who's who in Hollywood doing voice acting.. Paul Newman did a voice in the movie Cars.. Pretty much everyone has done a voice or two.. Tony Shalhoub?? Know who he is?? Remember the TV show called Monk?? Well he also did a voice in Cars..

The Budget for Cars by the way was $120 million.. But if you look at the voice cast, a lot of big names.. Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Tony Shalhoub, Michael Keaton, and many others.. Again an all digital movie..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lynk Former

Of course, if it was as easy as you like to suggest, I'd be making my own indie-RPGs right now instead of typing these posts lol.

I never suggested it was easy.. I said it wasn't $100+ million dollars hard.. There is a difference.. I also said that it isn't as hard as some of you think.. But then again you can think what you want..

@ MajikMyst: What games have you made? You've gone on about this for a few posts now, either source your credentials and proof or you're just some guy who's talking big... which is a very common thing on the net so don't expect people to just believe you when you say things like that.

Also, how do you know for sure that textures are being reused and that chunks are being taken from previous games? You have claims but no proof of this, show us definitive proof and we'll believe you.

As for how much the game costs, I assume that some of the money spent was wasted redoing parts of the game. From what I've noticed this game has had its visual redone at least three times now and from interviews with folks from BioWare, parts of the game have been retooled and some things have been completely redone.

On the point of voice acting... so it's a case of status rather than talent?

Mel Gibson has a very distinct and powerful voice, he's a damn good actor (even if he has lost his mind the last few years), but Mel Gibson can only do his Mel Gibson voice... on the other hand, Steve Blum has a way of not sounding like Steve Blum, he's even done the voices of small children in one or two anime... so that makes him a very versatile voice actor who can play the Bounty Hunter but then also provide voices for other more background and throw away characters.

But all in all, I do think that whatever the cost of this game is, it is ridiculous, yes... though as I said before, I'm sure they wasted a lot of money to begin with when they started the project and then realised they needed to redo a lot of what they had done... that is unless you think they should run their employees to the ground with overtime and not pay them like Rockstar did with Team Bondi and then leave them for dead once the project is done. It's been quite a few years in development and there are a lot of people working on the game... they also need to set up an infrastructure for the game when it is released and people start playing it too which means more people will need to be hired to maintain the game. Money, money, money...

I am entitled to my opinions.. Sorry.. But your are going to have to deal with it.. I have more than made it clear as to why I feel the way I do..

We are going to have to just agree to disagree.. Please do not edit my posts again.. Thanks!!

My posts were to different people.. You will have to learn to deal with that too.. Everyone I respond to gets their own post.. I am not going to mash them all together because of some unwritten and BS rule that you made up..

My big issue has always been that I find it hard to believe that the cost to make a video game has eclipsed that of the cost to make a blockbuster movie like Star Wars Ep. 3..

That doesn't mean it didn't happen and on more than one occasion I have said I could be all wrong about this.. And I could be.. I have also stressed that is my opinion.. No need for you to even argue and make an arse out of yourself.. Again, I could be wrong.. And if you want to think I am.. I don't care.. I am not the one pulling lame rules out of my arse just to piss people off..

Yes.. I read the rules.. There is no rules about making multiple posts to different people.. According to the rules, I could write 12 posts to 12 different people all in a row.. It also doesn'tgive you the right to arbitrarely edit people's post.. While I will leave your edit there as I think it makes a fool out of you..

Seriously you want me to edit my post anytime someone else responds? Why don't you do that?? Why is it wrong to write three posts to three different people?? Are you OCD or something?? You don't like seeing more than one post in a row?? Do we all just need to wait until someone has posted so we can reply again?? Give me a break!!

Making different posts for each person makes it easier for the person I responded to find my reply to their post.. If it is all mashed together as a single post.. It looks as if I am replying to a single person and just quoting multiple parts of what they said.. Which, thanks to you, is how my post looks.. Again.. Please do not mess with my posts.. Unless I actually break a rule, you shouldn't be messing with my posts at all!!

MajikMist, just a heads up double/triple/polyposting has been considered poor form for longer than I remember, and moderators correcting it has common practice for just as long. I even seem to remember it being in the rules a long time ago (and even now it could be arguable be considered a violation of the bumping rule). This is in place to avoid thread clutter. Also, your 3 posts look better as one.

Regarding your points about video games being cheap to make and Bioware reusing code, animations, textures, and the like from KOTOR is blatantly wrong. Bioware licensed a new engine from a middleware company (don't even think that that makes it cheap, B2B products tend to have low sales volumes and thus are very expensive. Here is a link to an interview with the engine's creators, where they state that the cheapest you can get a license is in the "low 6 figures". That's what it costs to use in something like one country, and since TOR is going to be sold internationally it'll be much higher), which did save them time on the tool development, but it means that all their old code is non-compatible. Plus they had to redo large portions of the engine anyway.

As well, their models are completely different, and since animations tend to be built into the models and textures made to work with specific models, those have all been thrown out the window. When you factor in the artistic style change and the fact KOTOR is a very old game now, they probably wouldn't even use those assets even if they could.

By the way, most people recommend not picking fights with the moderators, it makes life easier for you. In fact, I'd say picking fights with anyone is bad practice.

Also, while maybe not explicitly a rule double/triple/quadruple/etc. posting has always been frowned upon, it's like masturbating on an airplane.

I can't be arsed to read through an entire thread of nonsensical bickering, by both sides, but from what I've gathered this entire debate seems to stem from the disbelief that the development of The Old Republic could have actually costed this estimated $100-$300 million USD. However, from what I understand after reading the original post, that $100-$300 million estimate is for the game's entire budget not just its development costs. So that will include things like marketing, an example of which are those fancy-pants CG E3 trailers we've been seeing every year, which are far from cheap.

Just to give a bit of perspective to the development cost vs. a game's budget, Modern Warfare 2 has an estimated development cost of $40-$50 million but it had a budget of around $200 million. Granted we're talking about Call of Duty which demands a high marketing budget, but it is also an annual release (with bi-annual developer cycles) while on the other hand TOR has been in development for quite a bit longer. TOR was officially announced in Fall 08, but no doubt it was in development for quite a while prior to that.

So regardless of personal opinions on whether or not the development alone for TOR could have cost upwards of $100 million, the budget with marketing included I think easily eclipses that mark. Personally though I don't have a hard time believing the development costs for TOR alone could eclipse $100 million, but it's not like I've ever managed a game's development budget, so I wouldn't honestly know. But for argument's sake let's do some simple math...

Average United States employee works 2000 hours a year - 2000
We'll play it stupid safe and say on average they make $10 an hour - 2000 x 10 = 20000
That's $20,000 a year for each employee (Game Industry mag has estimated that the average game developer makes closer to $73,000 just fyi)
We'll play it safe again and say BioWare Austin has 100 employees - $20,000 x 100 = $2,000,000 per year
2008 - 2011 = 4 years, we'll say they developed for 1 year prior to announcing so 5 years of 2 mil equals, $10 million for employee wages alone... at an extremely safe estimate.
Don't question my math, I'm Asian, I own 3 abacuses that the government knows about.

So at basically a slavery level of employment estimate we're looking at $10 million spent alone, 10% of that fabled $100 million. (if I were to make an actual estimate though I would guess during its entire development cycle the team alone has earned over $50 million in wages). That doesn't count the cost of these horrific unknown voice actors. Doesn't count the bills they have to pay to keep their crap computers that reuse assets running, doesn't even count the cost of electricity in general. Nor does it include the cost of running and maintaining the beta servers that they refuse to let me participate in.

TL;DR version, **** adds up.

"Women are like sunsets… they’re beautiful, but there will be a different one tomorrow." - Gilder

@ MajikMyst: Actually, since GTA4 there have been several occasions where video games have gone beyond the 100million mark. But the point of that link was to point out that video game budgets are escalating to new heights every year.

Also, stop whining. Of course you're entitled to your opinion, and so is everyone else, hence why people such as myself can post opposing thoughts to your own.

That... and I never once touched any of your posts ever. Deal with it.

I am sorry for wrongfully accusing you of editng my post.. In either case, my posts were not against the rules and should not have been edited..

So it will be noted.. No other forum has had issues with multiple posts to different people.. Multiple posts to the same person yes.. But not different people..

I don't wish to get into another arguement about this.. But this is not a common and well known rule by any stretch of the imagination.. Still it isn't listed in your posting rules and therefore does not exist.. Despite what some others say.. I have been posting in forums since forums first started.. Back when AOL was the ISP of choice.. Well.. At least it was to some.. This has never come up before now..

Again I am sorry for wrongfully accusing you.. My bad..

As for the rest?? I have been a beta tester for about 15 years.. Worked on the first versions of Direct X for Microsoft for Win95.. Worked hand in hand with countless gaming manufactures in testing their games for compatibility for Direct X.. Worked with hardware manurfactures when it came to writing drivers for Direct X.. I am now retired, but still enjoy gaming and beta testing.. I beta tested Cataclysm for WOW and now currently SWTOR for BW and EA and Lucas Arts.. As well as many other MMO's both past and present.. But making games is pretty much the same no matter what they are.. The mechanics are different of course, but world creation is almost the same.. Due to NDA's I really can't go into any more details.. Except to say what has already been released..

I am surprised at the stated cost for GTA.. But if that is how much they cost now.. Wow.. I still think the CEO has rocks in his head.. But that is me.. Again, I am entitled to my opinons..

As for the rest of you.. You are also entitled to your own opinions and your own math.. Again.. We all are entitled to our own opinions..

Yup, but the facts are that games really are getting more expensive and there's no denying that trend. I do think it absurd how much money some of these companies spend to make some of these games but the bigger the risk, the larger the reward... games like GTA and Modern Warfare are 100million+ games but they rake in the cash to make up for the cost.

Same goes for TOR, it's a high risk venture but enough people who have invested in its development, as inefficient as it may be, believe that the returns are going to be a lot more than what was put in.

On a more sobering note, Nintendo is one of the few developers who is actually capable of making a game for very cheap and then in the long run getting an extremely high return from their efforts... and there are many other companies like that, however BioWare, EA and LucasArts are not part of that thrifty developer circle at this stage... the truth is, there is a division happening with video games at the moment. You either make them for dirt cheap or you spend a HUUUUUGE mining dump truck full of cash worth of money on them... but these kinds of things are just trends and the video game industry is still very young. We can't really say that these trends will continue, they'll probably change as the industry evolves further.

I am sorry for wrongfully accusing you of editng my post.. In either case, my posts were not against the rules and should not have been edited..

You posted three times within the space of less than an hour, when no-one else had replied. I'm sorry you feel that your posts should not have been edited, but you could have easily amended your posts by using the 'edit' button, hence me merging them for the reasons Hallucination mentioned.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MajikMyst

]I don't wish to get into another arguement about this.. But this is not a common and well known rule by any stretch of the imagination.. Still it isn't listed in your posting rules and therefore does not exist.. Despite what some others say.. I have been posting in forums since forums first started.. Back when AOL was the ISP of choice.. Well.. At least it was to some.. This has never come up before now..

That might be an oversight on our part, in thinking that people would rather use the 'edit' function instead of amending a post that is less than an hour old, but to say this rule is uncommon on many forums is wrong.

You can think it's 'BS', so by all means carry on posting multiple times when it's not necessary and only serves to clutter up the thread, and I'll keep merging them to make it easier for other readers to follow.

That's all I'm going to say on the matter, please let's keep this on topic from now on.

... As I said, I have been a part of making a lot of them.. If you want to think it is this grand complicated process that costs $100 million dollars. ... Most of the textures being used are being reused from Kotor and Kotor2.. Much of the code being used is from those games.. The engine being used is simply an upgrade.. Heck some of the animations being used came from those games.. ... Much of this game was written when they made Kotor..

I do not know you from a hole in the wall, so I will not question your past work experiences in the video game business, but I do question how much you actually know or have seen with Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I have been following the game since the rumors first leaked in 2005, then again in late 2007, then registered on the forums in 2008 when the official website came out. I can tell you right now that you are absolutely 100% dead wrong about the animations bit I quoted, as well as the engine they use, and the textures. Number 1, the fact that KoTOR 2 was developed by a different company altogether means that Bioware has no rights to use any part of that game in SW:TOR.

Number 2, Back in 2008 the very first screenshots released did in fact use KoTOR 1 textures, they admitted that. But, the game has been in development for well over 4 years now, and the art department is amazing at Bioware; those textures are all brand new. Go to youtube and watch the swtor transformation video and you'll be able to clearly see the texture transformation from KoTOR1 to pure amazing.

Number 3, NONE of the animations used in SW:TOR are from KoTOR1. Those are all 100% choreographed - you can see that in the development series they did about animations in SW:TOR a few months back.

All in all, I think that you are seriously miscalculating the amount of time, effort, and capital that Bioware, LucasArts, and EA have put into this game. I do not believe a word that the CEO from BigPoint said, and I honestly think he just realizes BigPoints next "big" mmo will fail because of games like SW:TOR and Guild Wars 2 that are going to revolutionize the genre.

On Topic- (general statement not directed at anyone here)

If you can't afford $15/month when you have a full time job or career, then you need to re-assess your finances because you obviously have no idea how to budget properly. I can definitely speak on this considering I have 2 children that are both in daycare, a wife that goes to school (ie. no income from her) and I'm an E-4 in the military and I can still afford a measely $15/month for a game that I will only play once the kids are in bed for the night.

Also, Bioware has already stated that they do not like microtransactions in the game because it is unfair. One player with more real money than another player will ALWAYS have better gear and items because they can afford to spend more. That is not what they want. They want subscribtions because that places all players on the most even playing field possible.

Sorry for the long post but I had a lot to respond to.

Edit - Since I don't think it's too obvious from my post... I think that Bioware, LucasArts, and EA will make back ALL of their money that they spent developing the game plus much more. I do not have a single doubt in my mind that this game is going to be the single largest MMO ever! Like someone posted before me, imagine Star Wars Galaxies with a storyline, actual content, developed by Bioware, and tons of Jedi that actually make sense for the era the game takes place in.

I can see the Bigpoint CEO's position. The development costs of TOR are so high that the game has to literally fly off the shelves at an alarming rate. In order to be popular enough to make the dev costs worth it, it has to beat WoW. Then again, maybe not. If they offer free to play main story, with optional pay to play extras, then we could see initial sales making up the bulk of costs, as those RPG fans who refuse to pay a sub lose their main argument. Then there are the options of lifetime subs for pre-purchase. Microtransactions, and a number of things I personally dislike would be other ways to get additional revenue. Heck they could even go so far as one character per license. Each additional character requires another purchase. Expansion packs released regularly that give some new feature, race, story or whatever is how WoW keeps bringing in new players and old players. And of course something that SW:Galaxies didn't do... ADVERTISE THE GAME!

And I'm pretty sick of people saying "X MMO is a WoW clone" because it has Y feature. If that's the case we could say that WoW is an Everquest clone. WoW used features from many existing MMO's and just refined them into an enjoyable game. I can't think of a single feature that WoW has that was not done in an MMO before it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamqd

I wouldn't be so sure Majik, remember, special effects take a few guys in an office somewhere and a Mac. Episode 3 is a couple of hours long, in the Old Republic there are 200+ hours story driven gameplay per class, thats a lot of voice acting, animation, cutscenes, world building item creation dialog writing etc...

Okay, I have to say, I stopped reading a few posts into page 2. So if there was something there that wasn't bickering, I apologize for not reading it.

Here is the long and short of it:

The 100-300 million 'budget' is poor wording on that CEOs part. The 'budget' as he is referring to it, is the cost to develop thus far, not a standard budget as we would commonly refer to it as an annual cost to maintain.

But the truth is, a FTP game cannot even remotely make an attempt to make that kind of money back, whereas a monthly subscription can. EA states it is aiming at half a million subscribers to be profitable. Now, that is a fairly large chunk of the industry, nearly five percent of WoW's take. I think it is an honest and easily reachable goal however.

That means that post launch, they need to maintain 500,000 subscribers for at least 56 months, or 4 year 8 months to recoup their expenses. Is this a stretch? Yeah, but to be quite honest, sitting at nearly 470,000 preorders, and that number climbing from 20,000 to 30,000 weekly, probably not.
Site:http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders.php
However, stereotypically a game with half a million preorders sells at least three times that many copies. If that were the case here as well, those numbers become significantly more realistic.

At 1.5 million subs: $120 million at launch, 22.5 million per month and full recoup in 16 months.

As you can see, the release of an MMO really does determine it's profitability. So I can see why Bioware and EA have been so cautious about the release and ensuring it is ready.

Disclaimer: Math does not account for server upkeep and minimum staffing requirements, nor future development costs or other random expenses like office rental/upkeep etc.

Minister of Propaganda - The EndbringersFormerly Deft Aklin - Regent of Dark Sovereignty/The Endbringers of Starsider“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him;
Not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.” –The Art of War, Sun Tzuwevegotcookies.com

Threads and posts must be placed in their appropriate forums: check out the forum description before posting your message.

Before posting a new topic, do a search to see if there is already a recent thread on the subject. If there is already a thread similar to what you’d like to post, feel free to read it and post a reply in the existing thread. Note that sometimes the search function is disabled, so do your best without it.

If you can find no suitable thread that has received new posts within the past few weeks you may post your own. Do not revive threads that have not had any activity for months or years this way. This is called Thread Necromancy and is generally frowned upon.

Be specific when you name your topic. This will aid in topic searches and help prevent someone from posting something you already have.

Please refrain from starting topics on your life experiences unless the scope is focused and narrow enough to foster good, mature discussion. This is not the place to write about what you did during the day, nor is it a place for you to rant about anything and everything of little interest to anyone but yourself. If you want to write about that sort of thing, please use the Blog section instead.

Try to stay on topic. Discussion is a good thing and is encouraged, but if what you have to say deviates a lot from the topic, do not post it in that thread. Consider starting your own thread instead. This is a matter of respect to the thread starter.

If you want to add something to a thread that you have recently posted in, and no one else have made any new posts in, edit your last post in the thread instead of creating a new one. If several days have passed where no one has posted anything and you have something substantial to add to the thread you may make a new post instead.

AND:

Quote:

Originally Posted by More Rules

The staff reserves the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread or post for any reason deemed necessary.

Why do we merge multiple posts? Because your avatar and signature take up space in each post. We have people from all over the world, some of whom who are still on dialup or on satellite, and they have extremely slow connections. Making them wait ages for the pages to load so you can multi-post is not being considerate to them. Other sites may not care as much and thus allow you to multi-post. We are not them. We choose to do things a little differently here, and so you'll have to adjust accordingly. Thank you for your consideration of our members with very slow connections.

Quote:

I beta tested Cataclysm for WOW and now currently SWTOR for BW and EA and Lucas Arts.. As well as many other MMO's both past and present..

You'll have to PM me your TOR name and server then--perhaps we can quest together.

As for profitability--I would not be surprised if TOR recoups all its development costs in pre-order game sales alone. I believe they have about a million pre-orders already. The only MMO in development now with equal or greater hype surrounding it is Guild Wars 2, which also looks like it's going to be an outstanding game. There is more than enough content in the base game of TOR alone to keep subscribers happy for quite some time, which will translate into a lot of subscriptions. They're already working on content releases from what I've seen in dev blogs and Stephen Reid's tweets, so the game is going to continue to grow and evolve. Will it have the staying power of EvE or WoW? I think it very well might, especially as BW continues to develop and expand the game.

@Mav--the gov't never searched between my walls for that 5th abacus, and they left the house now, so I can give it back to you any time you want.

From MST3K's spoof of "Hercules Unchained"--heard as Roman medic soldiers carry off an unconscious Greek Hercules on a 1950's Army green canvas stretcher: "Hi, we're IX-I-I. Did somebody dial IX-I-I?"